1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the optimization of integrated circuit (IC) designs.
2. Description of Related Art
Integrated circuits and their designs are getting more and more complex. A typical design cycle may last a year or more and costs millions of dollars. With a long and expensive design cycle, it is important to make appropriate choices for, among others, process technology and standard cell library.
Traditionally, process technology and cell library are selected manually based on past experience. However, such a selection may not actually be the optimal design point for a particular IC design. This is especially true as the complexity of IC designs increases because, for complex designs, it may be more difficult to determine which design points are optimal, particularly as the number of possible design points also increases.
In addition, as the complexity of IC designs continues to increase, the cost and time associated with fabricating such complex IC designs also increases, thus magnifying the effects of an incorrect choice of process technology and/or library.
Therefore, it is important to be able to estimate the performance of IC designs before fabricating the IC and also to be able to optimize the design based on the estimated performance. It is also important to be able to optimize the performance of the IC design by picking appropriate options for process technology and library.